Last night, with the incredible wasteland that is network tv, I broke down and watched Law & Order: SVU. Okay, I had tried to give up the entire batch of series (serieses?) because they were getting really leftwing stupid (not just goofy, but dowright blind to some serious possibilities and perspectives). Sadly, since I was already in the process of taping The Unit, and I can't stand to waste my time by watching as I tape, considering all the time I'm awake in the wee hours away from access to other entertainment outlets while I read, I surrendered to the inevitable. Boston Legal was not an option since they turned into Lawyers With a Kos. PBS wasn't coming through clearly enough.
It stinks not having cable or satellite tv.
But I digress.
L&O: SVU. The first 20 minutes of the show featured a perceived sex crime turned on its ear, becoming a brief shocker on high school "hooking up" practices and the trauma therein. You have a girl who wants to be a "good girl", who was a virgin and developed a serious thing for an older boy, who tells her he won't date her until she's gone a few rounds with a few others. She, desperate to date him, arranges to have a threesome with friends, and then regrets her situation, cries "rape", and, after Olivia (the female cop) talks with her gently, she confesses her dire situation and her error. It is a gut-wrenching scene, ending with the girl weeping on the officer's shoulder and the officer seemingly near tears over it all. Fade to black.
And they run a commercial for -- of all things -- VIAGRA! Like they couldn't have arranged to run the ad a little later in the show, when the focus is away from the tragedy of so-called "emotionless sex", and maybe put it in the middle of the pseudo-Tom-Cruise angle of the story, where the pop star is trying to prevent the girl from being forced to take the psychotropics that probably would save her life... Oh, no! That would be putting the focus on the overmedication of society at large! Heaven forfend that somebody might connect the dots between too many meds being prescribed for small, otherwise non-chemically solvable problems and the popularity of sexual enhancement drugs!
L&O:SVU is a program centered on sexually based crimes. Why would they take an ad for sexual enhancement drugs at all? Are the NBC programmers so completely irresponsible that they see nothing wrong with these mixed signals being transmitted? Next, they'll start running ads for baby pageants and teen chat lines during a show on paedophiles!
There is such a thing as extremely inappropriate ad placement. NBC has proven it.
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